From: James Easton <pulsar@compuserve.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 22:54:49 -0400
Fwd Date: Sun, 07 Sep 1997 10:01:21 -0400
Subject: Re: Documentation of the transistor's invention

Regarding...

>From: Henny van der Pluijm <hvdp@worldonline.nl>
>Date: Sat, 6 Sep 1997 00:39:42 +0200 (MET DST)
>Subject: Re: Documentation of the transistor's invention

Henny wrote:

>I have browsed the site of Lucent Technologies, the owner of Bell
>Laboratories that invented the transistor. I went through the info
>about the transistor, and especially its history.

>Frankly, I am not impressed.


Henny,

It is, as noted, an overview. An impressive presentation though. <g>

It seems there isn't anything on the WWW which goes into the
background detail required, but that's perhaps to be expected, it's
a vast historical arena.

As just mentioned to Stig, there has been material on the history of
the transistor published in a number of scientific journals and I'm
sure we can find what we're looking for there, or at least references
to older sources.


The seminal work on the field is suggested to be Shockley's "Electrons
and Holes in Semiconductors", which on page 35 notes, "An important
discovery of Bardeen and Brattain was that, when the input point is
biased for forward current flow, it become surrounded by an area of
interaction; if the output point is placed within this area, the input
current controls the output current in such a way that power gain
results".

This begins to set out the development of Shockley, Bardeen and
Brattain's research, exactly what we were looking for.


The original paper on the development of the transistor is apparently:

J. Bardeen and W.H. Brattain, "Physical Principles Involved in
Transistor Action", Phys. Rev. 75, 1208-1225 (1949).


I should be able to obtain copies of both.


>The invention of the transistor, one of the most important inventions
>of this century, should surely be considered by a few writers as
>material to write a book or two about that include all the above:
>who, when exactly, where. The desire to make a breakthrough, the
>request for funding, the forming of a team, the initial attempts, the
>flukes and glitches, the deadlines, the opposition, the sweat, the
>sleepless nights, and finally: success!

I would like to see that story as well.

From what I have seen so far though, it does seem to be a story of
ongoing research and development into semiconductor materials,
research which predated 1947 by some years and which ultimately found
germanium to be a suitable medium.

And in essence, really that simple.

If we can establish that to our satisfaction, it might be time to ask
others to produce evidence of equal genesis and provenance.



James.
E-mail: pulsar@compuserve.com